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Nothing empowers aggressive action like telling the bully you’ll do nothing to stop him.

WASHINGTON – The White House said Wednesday that President Obama is not actively considering military force as an option in the crisis in Ukraine.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said military action is “certainly not at the forefront of discussions” among the president and his top advisers, saying that Mr. Obama is looking instead at imposing further economic sanctions against Russian leaders for the takeover of Crimea.  “You can expect further costs to be imposed on Russia,” Mr. Carney said.  (link)

One hour later in Ukraine/Crimea: (more…)

Putin plays “Risk”, Potus plays “Sorry”. 

Remember it was all the way back on February 19th when Obama promised to take action if Vladimir Putin “stepped over the line” and used military action in Crimea. Russia has not only used military action, it has annexed Crimea.  So today:
WASHINGTON DC – President Barack Obama today imposed sanctions on seven top Russian government officials and four others from Ukraine and warned Russia will face more penalties if it doesn’t pull back from Crimea.
“Continued Russian military intervention in Ukraine will only deepen Russia’s diplomatic isolation and exact a greater toll on the Russian economy,” Obama said at the White House. The U.S. can “calibrate our response” based on whether Russia chooses “to escalate or to de-escalate the situation.”
The U.S. actions, which mark the broadest use of sanctions on Russia since the end of the Cold War, were made in concert with the 28-member European Union, which imposed its own set of penalties. The U.S. also included a ban on travel visas.

Obama left the door open for diplomacy, saying Russia must pull its forces back to their bases in Crimea, accept international monitors and open discussions with the government in Kiev.  (read more)
 

(UK Independent) The Libyan former prime minister Ali Zeidan fled last week after parliament voted him out of office.
A North Korean-flagged oil tanker, the Morning Glory, illegally picked up a cargo of crude from rebels in the east of the country and sailed safely away, despite a government minister’s threat that the vessel would be “turned into a pile of metal” if it left port: the Libyan navy blamed rough weather for its failure to stop the ship. Militias based in Misrata, western Libya, notorious for their violence and independence, have launched an offensive against the eastern rebels in what could be the opening shots in a civil war between western and eastern Libya.
Without a central government with any real power, Libya is falling apart. And this is happening almost three years after 19 March 2011 when the French air force stopped Mu’ammer Gaddafi’s counter-offensive to crush the uprising in Benghazi. Months later, his burnt-out tanks still lay by the road to the city. (more…)

BBC reporting 95.5% in #Crimea voted to join Russia. Which means that North Korea will claim their dictator is 4.5% better.

— Darth Putin (@DarthPutinKGB) March 16, 2014

(Reuters Report) Russian state media said Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to break with Ukraine and join Russia on Sunday, as Kiev accused Moscow of pouring forces into the peninsula and warned separatist leaders “the ground will burn under their feet”.
RIA news agency said 93 percent backed annexation, citing an exit poll released as voting ended at 8 p.m. (1800 GMT). Another Russian agency said turnout was over 80 percent.
Caught in an East-West crisis reminiscent of the Cold War, Kiev said Russia’s build-up of forces in the Black Sea region was in “crude violation” of an international treaty, and announced plans to arm and train 20,000 members of a newly-created National Guard to defend the nation. (link)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama’s national security team discussed the Ukraine crisis in a session at the White House on Saturday after a last-ditch bid to find a diplomatic solution to the Cold War-style standoff with Russia floundered.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who just returned from talks with his Russian counterpart in London, was at the White House meeting along with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
Obama did not attend the meeting but was being briefed about it and other developments involving Ukraine, said Laura Lucas Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council.  (read more)

It appears we’re not exceptional enough to have primary responsibility for maintenance of the internet…

WASHINGTON DC – U.S. officials announced plans Friday to relinquish federal government control over the administration of the Internet, a move that pleased international critics but alarmed some business leaders and others who rely on the smooth functioning of the Web.
Pressure to let go of the final vestiges of U.S. authority over the system of Web addresses and domain names that organize the Internet has been building for more than a decade and was supercharged by the backlash last year to revelations about National Security Agency surveillance.
The change would end the long-running contract between the Commerce Department and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit group. That contract is set to expire next year but could be extended if the transition plan is not complete. (more…)

VICE News correspondent Simon Ostrovsky travels to the Kherson region of mainland Ukraine to both the Ukrainian and Russian checkpoints. At the Ukrainian checkpoint, Simon goes inside one of their tanks, and speaks to the commander, who says that despite his Russian blood he will defend all invaders. But at the Russian checkpoint, the exchange isn’t quite as cordial. (link)

(Via Breitbart ) Oleg Atbashian, a Florida resident and conservative activist who now runs the political parody site “The People’s Cube”, worked as a propaganda agitprop artist for the former Soviet Union, when he was a young adult working in his native Ukraine.
Now that he’s watching the debate unfold about Russia invading his native land, he said he can see the Russian rumor influence operation is making its way into western media the way it did during the Cold War.
He has noticed, for example, the Russian narrative about the Ukranian opposition movement as “Nazis” and “Fascists” appears to be finding itself in Western outlets and American blogs.
“The Pro-Russian propaganda is still being spread. This time, it’s not leftists. It has nothing to do with Communism. It has nothing to do with anti-war sentiment. It has everything to do with Russian national interest and Russian nationalism and Russian dominance in the region. The same people the same town the same figures are being used to plant this information,” Atbashian, comparing it to the Tea Party being maligned as racists in the U.S.
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Der Spiegel cover:

"The Arsonist: Who Will Stop Putin?" pic.twitter.com/mqEJJJ7fUv via @adagamov

— Mig Greengard (@chessninja) March 9, 2014

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